172 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
not of a washed-out, brownish tinge. A small amount of salt 
may or may not be added before cooking. Authorities differ 
on this point, but I have used both methods and prefer to 
add salt after the vegetable is cooked. Cabbage should be 
boiled in salted water of 212° heat.” ^ 
It is not strange that nature study and the beginning of 
scientific pursuits should get their strongest impulse from 
gardening. It is said that all the nature study a child needs 
can be learned by working in a garden. Some believe that 
this is claiming too much ; but are not those who object 
usually the ones who have taken gardening in a literal and 
narrow sense ? There are certainly moments when it seems 
to a teacher as though the garden lay at the very heart of the 
world of science, so many truly scientific impulses have been 
known to begin or end there. As a source of material for 
study, it certainly does not run dry ; the animals and plants 
that jostle one another in a tiny space are likely to confuse 
a pupil by their very abundance and variety. Again, the 
problems suggested in a plot, however small, are universal 
problems. Where, indeed, can be seen more strikingly the 
effect of environment, or the survival of the fittest ? 
Bypaths, such as studies of spiders, of fungi, or of our 
native shrubs and trees, are all possibilities which, sighted 
through some garden experience, may be opened up to the 
young gardeners. A hand-to-hand conflict with pests makes 
children see the advantage of a knowledge of animals and of 
a collection of insects for study. As a result, a taste for nat- 
ural history begins to bud. A small collection, including at 
first only "local celebrities,” quickly outgrows its original 
cases, and some day the delivery of a mysterious package, 
plastered all over with Brazilian stamps, records the fact that 
rare beetles have arrived for a boy’s really valuable collection. 
1 Edith Loring Fullerton, The Vegetable Garden. 
